College of LAS « Illinois

Chemistry

Making Supercomputing Child's Play

Chemist Todd Martinez raised a few eyebrows last fall when he ordered several
PlayStation® 2s for his research lab. But entertainment was not why he and
curiosity-driven undergraduates were soon spending hours glued to the game consoles.
They were converting these toys into supercomputers.

Martinez relies on computers for churning through dense mathematical formulas
for calculating such things as the motion of electrons in molecules. The computations
can take from days to months to complete. He hopes to race through these calculations
by linking several of the PlayStations together to form a computing system with
the power equivalent to a supercomputer. Although the use of game consoles is
unique, this notion of assembling powerful computers from "off-the-shelf"
components is the trend in supercomputing design.

"It wasn't long ago that supercomputers were built from pricey,
custom-made components," says Martinez. "Some still are. But increasingly,
computer scientists are focusing their attention on designing software and high-speed
networks that can make roomfuls of standard computers work together as a single
powerful unit. The trend makes sense economically."

That's certainly true with PlayStation 2, which is cheap even by computer
standards—less than $300. The game consoles also offer impressive computing
capabilities. But it was the machine's complex graphics that caught Martinez's
attention when he first examined his son's PlayStation. The hardware structure
required for rapidly rendering the game's animations was similar to what
he needed for his massive molecular calculations. The machine is essentially a
supercomputer with a "parallel" architecture that can perform more
than one calculation at a time. But for it to have the power of a supercomputer,
dozens to hundreds of the machines must be corralled to function as a single machine.

As Martinez is discovering, designing software that can orchestrate that kind
of cooperation is not child's play. Martinez, engineering professor Sanjay
Patel, and engineering student Pavan Tumati already have some scientific software
running on the PlayStation. But other students are modifying Linux—a free
operating system that is widely used for "cluster" supercomputing—after
abandoning efforts to reconfigure the machine's Sony operating system. Martinez
and Patel have applied to the National Science Foundation for grants and are working
with researchers at UI's National Center for Supercomputing Applications,
who are designing "cluster" software.

"If we can get the PlayStations to work together," says Martinez,
"the price tag on supercomputing will drop to a level that even high school
students can use—for science, of course."